suggestions

Seattlebaby2006 · #1 (**permalink**) 01-31-2008, 10:49 AM

New here and need help please. I'm most of the way through the book and here's where we are:

My daughter takes a nap 12-2, we've started making the room not as dark as night so to differentiate between nap time and night time.

We do a regular night time routine (bath, books, jammies, bed). We put her to bed on her own with a night light and she puts herself to sleep every night, NO PROBLEM.

She wakes up every 1.5-3 hours from 8pm-7am to have a bottle but doesn't even wake enough to open her eyes but won't settle even with back pats, rocking, etc. The bottle is the only thing that has worked. Soooooooo,

we've started making the bottles smaller and diluted. She went from 4oz. to 3oz. now at 2oz., 1/4 strength. She resisted a little (was mad for the first several nights when the bottle ran out so quickly but was able to settle herself with her binky within 30 sec). Our plan has been to continue this until she's down to water and then nothing.

For the past week we feel like this is starting to backfire on us. She used to wake ~3 times (11,2, 5) but now she is waking up to 6x each night! So she ends up getting basically the same amount of liquid (albeit watered down) since she is now waking twice as much. We're all suffering.

The book up to this point really seems to focus on how to get them to go to sleep on their own (the first time), and she does that fine. We need help getting her to fall BACK to sleep when she wakes at night.

Suggestions?????

Zennifer · #2 (**permalink**) 01-31-2008, 09:17 PM

Have you tried doing the pull off method (in the book) where you wait until her sucking slows with the bottle, then try to take it away?

Is it possible that she is teething at all? My little guy is pretty close in age and his molars just finished coming in... it easily made him wake up 6 times at night! It made me pretty cloud-headed and forgetful to be on that little sleep... he only just started sleeping this past week (knock on wood) after those last molars came in... The whole teething thing can really do a number on them... and their sleepy parents... and it can really drag on as the last few teeth come in around just before 2 years! We were lucky with our first son because all his teeth came in before he was a year old... but wow... between the 7th-12th month he was VERY wakeful because of it!

I think you have a good routine going there, and a good game plan for the bottle... just thinking about that pull off idea. She does have a lot of ideas about how to keep the room dark, quiet with the least amount of stimulation possible for any wakings which really helps. Even nightlights can be too bright unless they are not in direct view. We were in a room with a nightlight at my inlaws over Christmas, and even though it seems really dim, once you are down for the night you expect darkness, and even a very dim light can seem like a neon sign - I had to cover it with a book to get some sleep!

Let me know if any of these ideas may help, or other questions or problems that you see in the ideas I had... we can work through it!

Seattlebaby2006 · #3 (**permalink**) 02-01-2008, 07:48 PM

Thanks for your ideas Jennifer. I remember you from our DIN/BIN board, your little guy is SO big now! We've tried the pull-off and that may be possible down the road once she gets used to this little amount but right now she sucks those 2 oz. down very quickly since she's used to even more.

The "night light" is actually her regular light which is on a dimmer (mainly so we can see when we go in there multiple times each night) but I can try turning it off completely. We also have a black out shade for the night time.

Teething is a possibility but since she's never slept through the night I don't know if it's making much difference right now.

I'll keep reading the book and hope that something starts working soon. If you can think of anything else, I would love to know!

Zennifer · #4 (**permalink**) 03-05-2008, 04:45 PM

Hi again!
How are things going now?
The only other thing I can think of, aside from perusing the book ideas, is to "fill that daytime tummy" which is in the book. We like to give our little guy a bedtime snack to help him out with that! Otherwise he is pretty hungry at night, too!